Sometimes I Wish I Could See His Wings
by ParallaxNoir
Summary: In which Dean imagines what his angel's wings might look like, marked with the pain he has caused. (Destiel)


**(Disclaimer: I own nothing about Suprenatural. I'm not nearly cool enough to do so, so I fanfiction.)**

_Sometimes I wish I could see his wings. And then other times I'm afraid of them._

It was nearly four o'clock in the morning, and Dean had given up trying to sleep about an hour before. His beer went warm about half an hour after that, and he had started hearing the ticks of the clock only ten minutes back. Now the room resounded with the short, cacophonous clicks, too sharp for a heartbeat and too slow for the humming of crickets.

Sammy was fast asleep on one of Bobby's couches. His brow, usually creased with the worry lines that the demons of his future stamped across his forehead, had smoothed to the comfortable rhythm of his sleep. As self-conscious as Dean felt about watching his brother sleep, he knew he wasn't really watching Sam. He might have been seeing Sammy with his eyes, but his mind was thinking _angel._

Not any angel. The only angel he would ever spend his sleepless hours thinking about, imagining what he might look like sleeping.

_That's so fucking creepy._

But no matter how many times he thought it to himself, he never felt creepy. Because when he closed his eyes and envisioned what he thought Cas's face might look like in sleep, there was nothing _creepy_ about it. He saw the soft line of his jaw, the sapphire of his eyes, the crushed wave of his hair… And he never thought _creepy_. All he thought was _angel_.

As often as Cas came and went on any given day, he never stayed the night. Sometimes Dean wondered if he even _did_ sleep. Do angels sleep? Do they dream? And then Dean always wondered if they do dream… do they have nightmares? And then he wondered what would scare Cas when he slept. And what would comfort him and take that fear away.

After Dean felt he had watched his brother's face for long enough (though it wasn't really him he was seeing), he looked away again. He knew that if he looked at Sammy any longer he'd start to try to imagine the rest of Cas as well, and he knew he couldn't do that. If he did, he'd start to think of his wings.

Dean leaned back in his kitchen chair, and the dry creak of the warped wood clashed with the ticking of the clock. He tapped the side of his bottle against the table, adding another sound to the mix, as he tried to distract himself from the images invading his mind.

At first he had been fascinated by trying to imagine the angel's wings. By trying to _see_ how they would curl around his body as he slept. Slept as he'd always imagined him. He'd always thought that an angel's wings would carry signs of everything that had happened in their life, if you could see them. Like the pages of an angel's story, all lain out in feathers. It had once been a beautiful sight in his mind. Every word of their life written in gold across a feather canvas. But then, once he started thinking about that, he'd inevitably think of what Cas's wings would show. And then he'd imagine all of the things that Cas had endured…

_All of the things that Cas had endured._

It probably wouldn't be so bad. It wouldn't be so bad if Dean could believe that none of it had been their fault. That there was even a single moment of pain, despair, or suffering that would have written itself along the lines of his back, etched into his skin as sure as ink, that would have been so without Sam and Dean Winchester.

Because now, whenever he tried to conjure the once calming image of Cas, caressed by the ivory tresses of his satin wings, he imaged too all of the pain _he'd_ marked them with. He saw those snowball feathers, soft as cotton and light as baby's breath, ripped, torn, and shredded by every blow he'd taken. Blackened and burned by the scorch of lies and betrayal. Splintered and shattered by the weight of trying to protect two people who hardly deserved to be saved.

_Sometimes I wish I could see his wings. And then other times I'm afraid of them._

It wasn't really his wings he was afraid of. Not even the fabricated sight of them. It was the suffocating feeling that if he did see them, and that he did see the… the damage, that he would know it was because of _him_. And that there'd never be any way that he could drag Cas out of his Hell. That he could never save him in the way that his angel had once saved _him._

As the bottle slipped from Dean's fingertips, he closed his eyes. He heard the dull thud of glass on the kitchen floor as it broke the monotony of the clock ticks, and he felt the luke-warm drink pool onto the floor beneath his bare feet. But it wasn't until he heard Sammy stir on the couch and sit up that he opened his eyes again and wiped the pain from his face.

"Dude, what time is it?" His brother asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"I don't know. Like four." His voice was even and controlled. He even sounded tired.

"Have you slept?"

"'Course. Just got up for a beer." Dean grinned and picked up the bottle, taking it over to the sink.

Sammy raised an eyebrow, incredulity coloring his features. "A beer? At four in the morning?"

"Yeah, Sam, a beer at four in the morning. What, I need a reason to have a beer at four in the morning?" Dean felt the defensiveness bleed into his tone, but he let it, hoping it would push out the images of those wings. Those wings… bent, battered, broken…

"Whatever, man." Sam shook his head and lie back down onto the couch, nestling into the cushions.

Dean cleaned up the spilled beer and reclaimed his seat at the kitchen table, letting the staccato of the clock fade from his conscious thought once again. As he pulled over one of Bobby's books, he let one last image of the sleeping angel cross his mind.

_Sometimes I wish I could see his wings. And then other times I'm afraid of them._


End file.
